


if she was my friend, it was a long time ago

by tielan



Category: DC Cinematic Universe, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-01
Updated: 2017-10-01
Packaged: 2019-01-07 10:32:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,240
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12231078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: He dreams of screaming, of a burning line of fire around his wrists, around his throat, around his soul. He is peeled like a potato, scraping off sections of his mind, digging parts of him out, throwing them away. And although he knows they’re not good parts, not parts that he should want to keep, he clings to them because they’re him; they’ve been him for so long that he may not exist without them...





	if she was my friend, it was a long time ago

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thesleepingsatellite](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesleepingsatellite/gifts).



Bucky doesn’t remember much of the journey across the ocean.

He remembers the argument between blond and brunette, words that didn’t quite penetrate the haze of his defrosting.

He remembers the brunette surveying him with prim and pitying gaze, even as she explained things to him, even as she handed him over to someone who was at once strange and familiar...

He remembers the blueness of the sky and the salt of the sea on his skin, the play of light across her muscles as she rows with the other women, the hard and worn wood of the oar underneath his hands as he rows with them, pushing himself as far as he thinks he can and then through and beyond the pain.

It’s not until the leader calls for them to counter-stroke through the breakers of the beach that he realises that he’s rowed his palm raw.

“Fool,” says the woman beside him, scathing as she catches his hand. “Why didn’t you say?”

He doesn’t know why. Maybe because he’s still getting used to what he says being heard. Maybe because none of them stopped or complained, and so he couldn’t. _Don’t stand out. Don’t be noticed. Don’t draw attention._

Maybe because they’re all women, and for him to drop his oar first would be...humiliating. Never mind that they’re women with muscles, weapons in flesh and bone, and quite comfortable in their skins.

“You’re fouling the stroke,” says the leader, impatiently. “Pull your oar in, or let Surya take place again.”

Surya indicates her willingness to take up her oar again, and Bucky finds himself shuffled off to the bow of the boat, up near Diana, who regards him with neither pity or sympathy – then again, she never did, even during the war.

“You have a voice again,” she says, moving with the other rowers in perfect rhythm. “You must learn how to use it.”

Old terror clutches at him, and he turns his face towards land and the golden sand beneath the sharp cliffs of the island.

“James?”

“Where is this?” He squints at the gleam of sunlight across exquisite architecture – an island both functional and beautiful, and one that he’s pretty sure he’s never heard of, either Before or Since.

There’s a greeting party assembling on the beach; women in Greco-Roman clothing, riding horses, carrying spears and...guns?

“This is Themiscyra,” says Diana quietly, but what he hears beneath her words is, _This is home_.

–

Bucky would know the woman on the horse for the leader of this island, if only for the way that she looks at him like he’s something the dog brought in and keeps them standing on the sandy shore when they’re all exhausted.

Well,  _he’s_ exhausted anyway. And his right hand, raw and doused in ocean water, has a biting ache.

“Another one, Diana?”

Another? How many have there been?

“The world has changed, mother.” She still speaks as boldly as she ever did, but there’s deference, too, a respect that she never showed to any of the Howling Commandoes – including Steve. “Ares’ death left a hole in the fabric of this world, and the Asgardians have not moved to fill it as was first thought.”

“And yet this one is no Daughter of War.’

“No.” Diana looks her mother in the eye. “But he has seen much, and knows much.”

The leader – possibly even a queen, given the headgear she’s wearing – studies him, her blue eyes sharp and seeing as she looks him over. Once, Bucky would have preened; now, he recognises the look as one a commander gives a possible recruit – categorising, considering, judging. “He bears an ensorcellment, Diana.”

“It can be removed.”

In the wake of Diana’s statement, Bucky stares at her. “It can?”

She looks back at him. “I told you it could be removed in Wakanda.”

He only vaguely remembers Wakanda after being reawoken from the ice; the questions they put to him, the answers he gave, and Diana’s statement at the end of it all:

_What was done to you can be undone. But not here._

_I’ll go wherever I have to so I can be rid of this._

Apparently ‘wherever he has to’ includes islands you can row to from the shores of Eastern Africa, with architecture that looks a thousand years old, and a population that seems to be entirely women...

Diana is speaking. “It will not be easy.”

“I don’t care about easy.”

So far as he knows, it’s true.

–

They take him at his word.

_Start now,_ says Hippolyta, the queen before she rides away, taking most of the court with her. Only Diana and two others remain.

“You’re sure you wish to do this?” The speaker looks perhaps a few years older than Diana, her dark hair just long enough to club at her nape. “I can take the first stretch from you if you require refreshment.”

Diana smiles, and reaches out her hand to grip the woman’s forearm. “There is no need, Menalippe. This is my burden, too. And I am yet familiar.”

The other woman throws up her hands, and turns away, heading for her companion. “We’ll be waiting for when you return.”

‘When they return’ is after running the length of the beach. When the shoreline vanishes, they work their way across slippery stones. When the rocks give way to the sea, they climb the rock faces of the cliffsides, and when the rock faces give way to the grassy knolls, they run down to the shoreline again.

So far as Bucky can tell, they circle the island. He’s not sure. He can’t think. But Diana shows no signs of wearying, so he keeps going, too. It’s no less than he’s done in...other times. Times he can’t consciously remember, but for which he feels the echo of unpleasant memory – a long chase through dark woods of a night, an endless wait on a freezing rooftop, the cold, hard shadows of endless corridors upon corridors...

He shakes his head to dispel the cold; this is sunlight and sand, bright beach, and brilliant water, the longboat beached and turned over to dry out, the two women coming towards them on the sand—

The butt-end of a spear coming for his jaw.

Bucky catches the haft just before it hits his chin, grabs further up the haft and twists the weapon out of her hands, before turning it back on her. Then he has to duck and roll as another spear-haft swipes at him from the side, aiming for his head. He comes to his feet, shedding sand, every nerve alert.

There are three of them, one of him. Two are leaning in, ready to come for him, while the third is holding back a little, but they’re all dangerous – it’s in the way they move around him, the way they hold their spears, knowing how to use them.

As he doesn’t. He doesn’t have any of his usual arsenal, no guns, no tickers, no flashbombs, no disruptors, not even anything he can use on the beach – just sand, sand, and ocean. At least the spear-haft is long enough that he can use it as a stave, with a bonus sharp end. And the advantage of a staff against a spear is that once the spear is thrown, the thrower isn’t going to get it back in a hurry. He only has to dodge.

But they don’t throw their spears, the eager two just circle him, spreading out so it’s harder for him to defend against both of them. The third stands back, waiting to come in and finish him off when it comes time.

No point in waiting, with three of them, he needs to take the upper hand.

A feint towards one with the sharp end of the spear forces her backwards, before he rushes the other, using the staff as both a line of defence and an attack. This one sees him coming and sidesteps him, hip-checking him along the way and knocking him sideways.

He’s not used to fighting on sand.

The surface gives beneath his feet, making it harder for him to keep his balance. Then the nearest one is on him, surprisingly fast.

She kicks sand in his eyes, and he sees it coming enough to narrow his eyes and throw up his arm against the dust. Throwing himself to the side and out of the way of her kick, he lashes out with the spear, only to have it torn from his fingers in a flash of glittering gold that sears his retinas and burns his skin. No time to look where it’s gone; only time to block the strike coming at him from the side; down on his knees in the sand.

He knows the battering is coming; knows that it’s going to hurt. A part of him cowers, confused and tired and just wanting respite. Even as the others close in, he knows he’s not going to get it. But he’s not going down quietly. It’s not in his nature to go down quietly.

He blocks their blows where he can, dodges those that he can’t. He lunges to try to bring at least one of them down. They draw back, circling him, and he starts to climb to his feet, then rolls away as one comes at him. He throws her, but she twists in the air, lands on her feet – acrobat and athlete, not just warrior.

The other one kicks his feet out from beneath him, and he tucks and rolls himself backwards coming up ass over heels to climb to his feet. So long as he’s on his feet, he’s not dead.

_I can do this all day._

It catches at his thoughts, a moment, a memory, a fingernail catching at him before being dragged off, torn away by time, gravity, and the dispassionate distance of the ice—the ice where they broke him down, ground him into nothing, stole his past and his future and made him an endless fugitive in the present—

A fiery slash of gold whips across his vision and he lifts his hand in instinctive defence.

It stings his flesh – more, it stings his  _memory_ .

_Bucky._

_Who’s Bucky?_

_Ja-ames! Stop it! Stop it now! Mom!_

_James Buchanan Barnes, I told you not to tease your sister!_

He’s surrounded by a ring of fire; burning through his skin, through his flesh and bone and soul, through to his exhausted heart, laying him bare. Even thought and word and deed, everything he’s had cause to do, everything he did without cause, everything that was done to him – cause and effect and bitter ending, shaking him down to his very foundations, crumbling him into dust.

“Who are you?”

The question resonates through him, and he feels it settle something in him, the pieces of his memory of his mind falling away to leave nothing but a small clear flame burning inside him.

“James Buchanan Barnes.”

“What has been done to you?”

Where does he even start? How does he begin to tell a tale that spans eighty years? “They...brought me back from death. Made me. Bound me. Set me to kill. Let me out to do the mission and then stored me away to rot.”

He can hear the murmurs around him, and a phrase flits, butterfly soft against his mind.  _...such a great cloud of witnesses..._

“Are you still bound?”

He struggles against the compulsions. They feel like barbed needles dug into his soul. “Yes.”

“Would you be free?”

“Yes!” But everything in him aches. “I don’t know how to be free.”

Above the burning rope of gold, dark eyes stare into his, and he sees in them the power and the madness of the gods, and understands a little. “You will learn.”

The burning grows. He remembers someone calling his name.

Then he passes out.

–

He dreams of screaming, of a burning line of fire around his wrists, around his throat, around his soul. He is peeled like a potato, scraping off sections of his mind, digging parts of him out, throwing them away. And although he knows they’re not good parts, not parts that he should want to keep, he clings to them because they’re  _him;_ they’ve been  _him_ for so long that he may not exist without them...

Bucky wakes naked, on a cool pallet, feeling wrung out and thirsty.

The chill in the air says he’s below ground, and water trickles into a pool somewhere nearby, a steady spill of liquid. He rolls to his feet and finds a low table set with a pottery jug and two pottery cups. Pouring the contents of the jug shows it to be water, and he drinks one cup, then another.

Echoes and the stir of air warn him that someone’s coming, and he turns, only to remember that he’s been stripped naked while he slept. That’s disturbing.

Although perhaps not as much as the first woman who enters.

It’s Peggy.

He gapes at her. Peggy Carter, dressed in the style of the women here – a loose tunic and tooled sandals, looking no older than he remembers although surely—didn’t Steve say—?

“You’re dead.”

The flicker of irritation that twitches across her face is familiar – and comforting. “So were you,” she says pointedly. “And it’s good to see you, too, Bucky.”

“It’s good—I didn’t mean—” Then he remembers the part where he’s naked.

Diana laughs as he covers himself and sets down the tray of food she carried in behind Peggy. “It is nothing we haven’t seen before, James.”

“Speak for yourself,” he retorts.

Peggy makes a rude noise in her throat. “I helped undress you,” she says, her accent as toffee as ever. “So, no, it’s nothing I haven’t seen.” She crosses over to a pile of clothing nearby and tosses him a pair of loose trousers. “But put these on if you’re going to be modest.”

As he drags the trousers on, Bucky reflects that this Peggy is a lot more authoritative than the one he’s used to seeing. The carefulness she showed during the war is gone. This isn’t a woman taking orders, this is a woman accustomed to giving them. Which, he supposes, she is, if she’s lived all this time and done everything Steve said she did.

When he turns around, the women have set out dishes on the table and are already pouring and filling their plates. It looks like it’s a meal for three – hopefully with answers, because he needs some answers about what’s going on here.

“Sit and eat,” Peggy tells him, indicating the space beside her. “You’re probably starving and we can talk while you eat.”

“Perishing,” he notes, using a term she used to use around the Howling Commandos. She makes a face at him – baring her teeth and wrinkling her nose, not just rolling her eyes. Yes, Peggy’s a lot more open now than she was when he knew her.

“Apparently it all starts with my great-grandfather – on both my mother’s and my father’s sides,” Peggy says with a look at Diana. “Because my great-grandfather was Ares.”

Bucky blinks, not entirely sure that he’s heard correctly. “Ares, as in...”

“Ares as in the god of war,” Diana says. “He was cast out from Olympus by Zeus to live on Earth, and inflamed the hearts of men towards war and discord.”

Bucky snorts as he helps himself to a flatbread and some olives that looked marinated in oil. “Like we’ve ever needed assistance with that.”

“Yes,” Peggy agrees. “However, apparently while Ares was human, he...sired children on Earth.”

“Daughters,” Diana says, dipping her bread in some kind of sauce. “To conceive a son would have required a willingness to cede his power. So, there were only daughters born. What he did not understand was that in siring daughters, he would create a different kind of power – one that would create...unique women when such bloodlines merged.”

“The Daughters of War.”

“Sounds like a secret society, doesn’t it?” Peggy grins. “Rather like the SSR.”

“If you’re all descended from...the god of War,” and Bucky wasn’t saying either yay or nay to that, “then isn’t it basically a secret society? And does that mean Steve’s gir—uh... The other Carter—”

“Steve’s new girl?” Peggy arched a brow. “As compared to the old girl? Oh, don’t look like that, Bucky. I got over Steve many decades ago – married someone else, loved him, and had children with him. Yes, Sharon is of the blood of Ares, which gives her a certain...advantage in the world.”

Bucky notes the distinction between ‘blood of Ares’ and ‘Daughter of War’. When he comments on it, Peggy shrugs.

“Bloodlines dilute,” she says frankly, spreading a fishy-smelling paste on a piece of bread. “If Sharon’s mother – my brother’s wife – had been of Ares’ bloodline, she might have been. But it only happens when lineages cross. So, yes, she’s of the blood of Ares – which is its own set of advantages and disadvantages both – but she lacks the...the spark...that makes a Daughter of War.”

“So what am I doing here? I’m clearly not a Daughter of War.”

“It was, in fact, an entirely separate lineage that pointed us to you. One which Peggy recognised many years ago and, in her own way, helped develop in her potential.” Diana lifts one leather-strapped shoulder in a shrug.

Bucky blinks. “Romanova?”

Diana looks at Peggy, who wa blinking as though trying to place the name. “The Red Room operative that Fury co-opted? No. Not her. The bloodlines of Ares don’t take well to biogenetic or behavioural tampering. The result tends to end up like the Red Skull – apparently another of Ares’ descendants.”

“You’re here, James, _because_ you’ve been...tampered with.” Diana sits back and looks at him soberly. “So long as Ares lived, he held a...balance of power. In the century since his death, humanity has seen changes beyond anything imagined in the thousands of years that he was on Earth. And there are still things moving beyond our ability to foretell or comprehend – this much we know.”

“We have reason to believe that what happened to you – what happened to Steve, what happened to the Avengers – is all part of a bigger plan, a destiny, if you will.” Peggy smiles at his snort. “When you consider that the last hundred years since Ares’ death has seen such changes, that I developed S.H.I.E.L.D after the war, that another Daughter of War was working with the Avengers until very recently, that we’ve seen such huge events so recently and so close together... Even that you were freed from HYDRA at this very time adds to a lot of coincidence in a very small period of time, as human time goes.”

Bucky looks from one to the other. “ And you expect me to believe  this?”

In response, Peggy points at her face. Then she drops her hand, tilts her head, and speaks a string of phrases. It takes Bucky a stunned moment to realise what he’s hearing, and to make sense of it.

His trigger. And he hasn’t responded.

“They brought me back to youth,” she says. “And they deprogrammed you. Doesn’t that deserve at least a little consideration?”

As arguments go, it’s a pretty compelling one.

“Okay,” he says. “You’ve got my attention. I’m in.”

 


End file.
